Submitted for your approval, please find what used to be the official, yet informal "Challenger Exercise" for Python 1000.

Formally off the blackboard & shared today on GitHub as PR1000.05 (document link), these two basic UML Diagrams will be reviewed on Udemy at a future date.

Until then, those who need an introduction to the UML might enjoy our YouTube UML Primer (video link). While far from a comprehensive review of the Unified Modeling Language, this short video will cover how to decipher the two basic diagram types used in the above.

Destined to be the first in a series of follow-on activities for our increasingly popular Python 1000 & Python 2000 training opportunities, we hope other new Python students will enjoy the sharing, as well.

There you have them - sitting in a box. --From lots of CDs / DVDs, to far too many USB sticks to contemplate.

Rather than sitting there - waiting for us to toss them out - wouldn't it be nice if we could use them to backup our 'stuff?

Backup Splits

Much like in the days when we had lots of drive-tapes, the challenge is to split a `too-big` collection of files, across a `too-small` series of media. A problem almost as old as computing itself, fortunately all POSIX systems come with a program called `tar`!

In the above, my task is to routinely back-up /d_drive into a folder named /d_backup. Once created, I want to split a julian-dated backup file into 4GB slices, from there to manually burn them out to a 2nd generation DVD drive. (*)

Splits Restored

To restore the files, all we need do is to (1) undo the `split,` by copying (2) all of the media-content to the hard drive, then (3) un-tar the concatenation:

cat * > d_drive.tartar xvf d_drive.tar

(*) Note that while the above `split` uses 4480 for the splits, that one should adjust the size to match the least-common size-denominator for any and all external media.